Ringfort (Rath), Kilgevrin, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Kilgevrin, Co. Galway

In a stretch of undulating Galway grassland, looking out over bogland to the east, a roughly circular earthwork sits quietly in the landscape, its double banks and intervening ditch still legible after more than a thousand years.

This is a rath, the commonest type of ringfort found across Ireland, built during the early medieval period as an enclosed farmstead for a single family or small community. The enclosure measures approximately 24.5 metres north to south and 22.3 metres east to west, making it a modest but reasonably well-preserved example of the type.

What gives this particular site a degree of archaeological interest is the way its defences have survived unevenly. The inner bank, which would originally have formed a continuous raised boundary around the interior, now survives only in sections, from the north-east around to the east and again from the south to the south-west. Elsewhere, the ground simply drops away in a scarp, the remnant of what was once a more substantial earthwork. The fosse, the ditch dug between the two banks to add depth and difficulty to the enclosure, still runs between them. A gap on the east-south-east side may be the original entrance, though it is not possible to say so with certainty. Intriguingly, another ringfort sits roughly 350 metres to the west, a reminder that these enclosures were rarely isolated features; the early medieval countryside was dotted with them, and neighbouring families would have farmed the land between.

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